Great long interview with Sam on Sky f1 channel after the race. He spoke a lot of sence. Seems like a great guy with a great mind. Shame he was streched so much at Williams. Looks like he has found a role that suits both sides.

It does seem that Mclaren have fallen apart on the operations front. Way too many pit stop errors and the like. If that is what he's in charge of, they must be wondering if they have made a terrible mistake.

Sam is a nice bloke that talks a lot of sense. He is not a great manager though. No one forced him to take on all the responsibility that he did. You could understand someone like Adrian taking on two or three roles. He has been there and got the tee shirt. Sam never really produced a good car. Yes he had plenty of financial constraints. But ultimately it was not his workload that resulted in his problems at Williams. It was his inability to delegate. By taking on too many roles he was reducing dissent/discussion within the team and ultimately he watered down the knowledge pool that the the car was being developed from.

I wish Sam all the best and I hope in a quiet moment he can revisit and learn from his mistakes at Williams.

sorry PJ but that is just so wrong. if anyone is to shoulder any blame then it has to lie squarely on the shoulders of FW,PH and AP.

they were the senior management, who, if they had been observant, would've seen where the problem lay and fixed it. to allow the situation to carry on for so long is simply a sad and sorry affair. just my opinion as an armchair critic.

The results both at Williams and Mclaren speak louder than Michael's talk. Williams retained a structure that worked successfully for 30 years. It's a structure Red Bull seem to adopt too, and Newey has the abilities to manage without complaint. I can fully understand SFW's reluctance to hire 2 people to do the job of 1 more talented individual, that is of course assuming Michael would have been able to work successfully with someone else.

I agree with K1 here. We knew what SM's remit was at Williams and it seems things are a lot better since he left. He should have been removed sooner by the people above him. They have a collective responsibility to the whole company.

Now it seems what he has been put in charge of at Mclaren which was working fine is falling apart.

Any patterns here? I wonder if the Mclaren board will be as patient. Somehow I think they will and like Williams, will come to regret it.

I am far from a Sam fan, but McLaren were always strategically a bit...prone to daft mistakes - who would look at a radar going "no rain for 10 minutes" and planning accordingly while their drivers skate off the track in a storm (this has happened several times). Their data-led approach often tripped them up compared to the data with Human instinct approach Brawn uses for instance.

I personally think that their pit stop problems will be a typical McLaren smart ar5e pushing the envelope too hard situation. They are so hell-bent on living up to their mantra that they miss the fact that it is better to do a Ferrari and do every stop in 3.5/4 seconds like clockwork than try to do it in 3 and mess up every other time. Regardless of the car at their disposal, Ferrari have always been quite a sharp race team. Even in the dark days of the 90s pre-Brawn.

Sam can't have screwed McLaren up that quick. I can't see how one man can destroy McLaren so quickly.

If it isn't just unfortunate timing though, McLaren have screwed up BAD. If it is true many at Williams will be pi55ing themselves!!

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